


The Circle Has Four Sides

by Glinda



Series: In The Cards [2]
Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Gen, Medieval Medicine, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-06
Updated: 2009-10-06
Packaged: 2017-10-09 01:54:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/81716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glinda/pseuds/Glinda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Medieval medicine and memories</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Circle Has Four Sides

**Author's Note:**

> Written for fanfic tarot, with much encouragement from those at [](http://camelot-fleet.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**camelot_fleet**](http://camelot-fleet.dreamwidth.org/), whole lack of season two spoilers. I went to a museum on the history of pharmacy/aphothacaries at the castle in Heidelberg; I made notes.

Mostly Merlin does not give a great deal of thought to Gaius' books. They sit on the shelves, in the workroom that Merlin inherited from him. Along with the medical, and magical, supplies that Merlin dutifully refills according to the strict instructions Gaius left him. Usually merlin can provide himself with a thousand reasons for Gaius' absence that allow him to work in peace. Today, is not one of those days.

He does not like to dwell on Gaius' death, blood and rage and Nimueh-will-burn-for-this, for that path leads nowhere good. However, today there is no rage or blood thumping in his temples. There is only a quiet, insistent sense of despair, slowly suffocating him.

He'd always known that his inability to say no to Arthur would be his downfall, but never expected the circumstances to be quite so mundane. Uther has fallen sick, with a non-magical but no less serious malady. The dragon can whisper about convenient opportunities all it likes, but the dragon doesn't have to look Arthur in the eye when he asks Merlin to save his father's life. Merlin learnt his lesson long ago about magical cures for mundane ailments, so it is to the more mundane texts among Gaius' collection that he turns. Gaius once told Merlin that he had the best collection of medical texts anywhere north of Iberia, so Merlin spends a long night pouring over the works of Galenos and Hippocrates, cursing the dubious translations from Greek to Latin along the way. It is nearly four in the morning and he's half way through the later volume before he thinks he's found a cure for Uther's illness. At which point he realises he's been forgetting that the season is Autumn not Spring rendering his cure useless, and promptly passes out from a mixture of exhaustion and despair.

Morning proper brings nothing but aches, stiffness and a vast selection of substances to try as seasonally specific substitutes. It also brings the far more welcome addition of Gwen, who comes bearing sustenance and plenty of patience and common sense. In a desperate attempt to organise his scattered thoughts he tries speaking them aloud. The rules and principles all sound so orderly and controlled when he attempts to recite them – four elements, four seasons, four humours, four segments of the body; there being only three types of raw materials always throws him – so distant from the messiness that is real life and real illness. It turns out they both have the same basic knowledge to start from; the joys, he supposes, of growing up too poor to afford a physician for all but the direst emergencies. While Merlin can augment this basis with an understanding of the properties of plants that have magical qualities; Gwen's knowledge of how to pick and prepare plants properly proves unexpectedly useful.

However seminal Dioshurides' _De Materia Medicia Libri Quique_ may be, Merlin can't help but feel that five illuminated volumes is slightly excessive – an index would frankly not go amiss – and that the instructions are unnecessarily detailed. They argue good naturedly over when certain plants are in blossom; and more seriously over whether Uther's blood should be quickened or slowed. When the final combination has been decided, Gwen takes certain ingredients away from him to prepare and Merlin is struck by a memory of another crisis years before. The cause and the cure are long forgotten, but the feelings remain just the same. He and Gwen are running around frantically preparing ingredients for Gaius in a race against time. He can almost feel the callouses on her hands as she'd turned his knife on its side, explaining that crushing would release the juices better; the echo Gaius' praise of her skill in his ears. His own lips form a shadow of Gaius's proud smile.

The medicine proves ever bit as successful as they'd hoped; Uther begins to heal and Arthur's relief and gratitude is almost palpable. Yet when Merlin is putting _De Materia_ back on its shelf in the workroom and no longer feels like he's trespassing by her presence alone; he's willing to argue that this victory was the hardest won of all.


End file.
